Abstract

Scientists like to make the irregular regular, to draw curves even in cases where nothing can be seen at all. Periodical wave curves are an excellent means of organizing the unorganized, of arranging the unarranged. Recent studies on long waves in economic development have found a periodicity in the time series of inventions and innovations that works exactly like a clock with an accelerating mechanism. What we have done here is simply to collect some interesting empirical figures and to exploit them by spectral analysis in order to find out whether regularities exist, and if so, whether they are statistically significant.